What's the best qualifying rounds strategy?

[Ken Leung]

After watching quite a few regionals, I realize a lot of important machines in the finals didn't really do too well in qualifying rounds.

I remember team SPAM and MiM at KSC weren't up at top 8, and happens to get paired up together by one of the top 8, and won the regional. I also remember yesterday when GRT got picked as the third partner, and ended up playing both matches in the championship finals, and won the regional because they were able to hold on two goals consistently.

Some times good robots got into top 8, some other times they didn't. A lot of times robots that deserved to go in the finals do get in, but I remember a few who didn't.

So, for all you strategy people out there, what do you think is the best strategy for playing the qualifying rounds?

Well, a lot of times we thought that playing the best we can is enough. Turns out the standings depended a lot on luck, and the way teams are paired up.

There are cases where really strong teams like HOT team and Baxter Bomb squad got to be #1 seed because their machines are excellent for this competition, and they played the best they could. So, I wonder, what's their strategy for qualifying matches?

Other teams that tried really hard to do their best in qualifying rounds, didn't got good seedings even though they have a really good machine for this competition... For those teams, I wonder what they did wrong in their strategy? What should they have done instead?


How do teams decide if they should play the best during matches to score highest for both alliance, or should they perform an operation consistently to prove to teams out there that they can be a great alliance partner?

Scouting is supposed to tell teams which robot is great for alliance partners... But how many teams actually did that?

So many variables, so little matches in qualifying rounds, and only 1.5 days to do all these....